How to use Production, Gold, and Faith in Civ 7?

[xehgre]

Yes there are different resources with different functions, but you don't explain why they cannot be traded. The game already allows gold to be traded for resources with other players, so why can't your "low-level trade" also trade gold for resources?

Using Evie abstraction for production. Buying units and buildings with Gold is trading gold for resources via this 'low-level trade'. Looking at the gameplay the 'low-level trade' and our current trading system live in 2 different scopes. Trading is done at the empire level, while the 'low-level trade' is done at the individual city, This allows the player to only worry about trading for the most important items between Civs. If the player could interact directly with this 'low-level trade' then we would have to implement city to city trading, just think about the number of AI request you would receive a turn. To me it sounds like we would be playing 'Spreadsheets Historical Edition' instead of Civ.

The game already features various resources needed for production. Making timber an entry into the resource catalogue would keep the mechanics all the same.

What's the gameplay reason for timber to be a resource? In essence having woods(or any feature) on a hex works the same way as bonus resources. They both just modify the base yields and allow certain improvement to be placed there.

 

[criZp]

Using Evie abstraction for production. Buying units and buildings with Gold is trading gold for resources via this 'low-level trade'. Looking at the gameplay the 'low-level trade' and our current trading system live in 2 different scopes. Trading is done at the empire level, while the 'low-level trade' is done at the individual city, This allows the player to only worry about trading for the most important items between Civs. If the player could interact directly with this 'low-level trade' then we would have to implement city to city trading, just think about the number of AI request you would receive a turn. To me it sounds like we would be playing 'Spreadsheets Historical Edition' instead of Civ.

This "empire-level" trade is no different from "individual city trade". If you acquire resources from other players then it's not the "empire" that use them, it's the individual cities that will use them. And I don't agree with your concept of what's important. If I want to produce something and that something needs a certain resource, then that makes that resource pretty important, I'd say.

What's the gameplay reason for timber to be a resource? In essence having woods(or any feature) on a hex works the same way as bonus resources. They both just modify the base yields and allow certain improvement to be placed there.

Is this a question? What's the reason for anything, including iron, horses, coal etc., to be resources? The reason timber should be a resource is because, well, it IS a resource.

 

[rocksinmypath]

De-abstraction of production into resources could allow for better specialization of cities, which is something I would like to see in the game. I don't like how little "flavour" Civ 6 cities have. Cities that get assigned specific roles are essentially ones that have the highest population and are able to build many districts, because they can act as domestic trading hubs, but having numerous districts is the opposite of specialization.

Introducing lumber as a resource gives a specific purpose to a city built near forests. The same can be done with farming towns built around areas capable of high food production. The excess food can be transported to other cities in your empire, for instance, one you settled in the middle of a desert, not because you expected high food and production from it, but because it's in the right location to act as a domestic or international trading hub. That could be a justification for de-abstracting food and converting it from a yield to a set of resources like wheat, rice (requiring different conditions for growth) and fish. In Civ 6, there's not much you can do to make a desert city feel special other than to build Petra in it, and even then, all Petra does is to normalize the city's desert tiles by making them more like non-desert tiles.

At the same time, de-abstraction probably isn't the only way to bring specialization into the game. I think governors were supposed to achieve this to an extent, but they're not really well-designed. Governor promotions are all over the place. Liang's first promotion gives an extra charge to every builder trained in her city. So, you want to keep her in a city in the centre of your empire so that you can distribute the extra-charge builders quickly to other cities in your city, right? But then, why does her next promotion unlock fisheries that can be only built in coastal cities? Coastal cities are usually on the edges of empires. If they're bringing governors back for Civ 7, I'd like to see them be designed with city specialization in mind.

 

[Naokaukodem]

OP : I think they are just fine. The examples you give do not differ too much from how they are used in Civ6 anyway.

The topic so far seems to bring great discussion about it, but I can't be bothered to read it all up, sorry. Or maybe later.

One thing about faith : you shouldn't consider it to do too important things or anything else as replacement beside religious things IF you acquire it like in Civ6, because in Civ6 you can choose to ignore it completely, and be fine with it. So it shouldn't make for too core things. Unless you acquire it differently obviously. I've thought out about a system where you had a prompt when your cities reach a size when they can build another district, because I often miss those opportunities. Of course there is reasons to that, like being busy to defend myself, build builders/settlers, military units, etc. but I feel a reminder, or maybe something more automatic for having some kinds of yields without having to plane everything hard. (I think about faith, but culture too. I hardly build theater squares in my games I feel they are useless, and too competitive for getting great people out of them)

 

[Evie]

This is realism-talk, not gameplay-talk again,

Strategic resources, in the game, serve to limit access to a relatively small number of higher-units, in order to foster conflict and interaction over control of those resources, with the possibility of losing access to those units as the forfeit if you cannot secure them

Lumber would not do that. Lumber, even if just required for shipbuilding, would block access to an entire category of unit and an entire aspect (naval ops) of the game. This is a much higher cost than losing, say, iron (which only enables two infantry and two cavalry units, while leaving other accessible) and prevent interaction with a very large part of the map. If you factor the role of timber (to this day) in construction and argue that many buildings and districts and improvements should require it as well, the situation gets far worse.

That - the fact that it has no more benefits than the other strategic resources while having a criminally higher penalty for those who lack it, is why lumber is different and should not be added, from a gameplay perspective, as a strategic resource. It's simply too ubiquitous a resource for a model that essentially represent *scarce* resources,

At least, not a civ 6 one. A civ IV style strategic resource like stone or marble were, which is not REQUIRED to build anything but accelerate the building of many things, would work much better.

 

[criZp]

The important aspect of a game isn't "gameplay", it's the experience that matters. And if you think immersion means nothing or that building iron-objects out of wood in any way is immersive then that's you, but not me.

Iron is a resource that is used by pretty much all units in civ (and is used in buildings too, as nails and reinforcing bars). The devs just restricted iron's use to certain units to prevent iron-havers from having too big an advantage. They could really choose to do the same with timber, i.e. needed only for the biggest ships, not smaller ones. Some civs having later access to a navy due to starting in some desert doesn't have to be a problem anyway, naval combat is just land combat minus the terrain element.

I do agree that resources boosting production speed (and perhaps lowering maintenance cost) instead of being necessities is a reasonable design.

 

[Zaarin]

Iron is a resource that is used by pretty much all units in civ (and is used in buildings too, as nails and reinforcing bars).

Iron is hyper-abundant; there is absolutely no need--in fact, it would be downright tedious--to show every deposit of iron on the map. The elements for bronze--copper, tin, arsenic--were much more scarce and had to be traded far and wide (e.g., the Near East got their tin from as far away as Cornwall).

 

[criZp]

No need to, regular mines could make iron and rare special sources could have more iron, allowing for more efficient extraction

 

[Evie]

Gameplay is in every imaginable way the most fundamental element of any game.

Immersion isn’t even close to mastering as much. (Though it does matter)

And sure, okay, only heavy ship require timber. How does requiring lumber for heavy ship make building light ship without lumber less immersion breaking? Aren’t you still building wood objects out of iron?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Gameplay is in every imaginable way the most fundamental element of any game.

Immersion isn’t even close to mastering as much. (Though it does matter)

And sure, okay, only heavy ship require timber. How does requiring lumber for heavy ship make building light ship without lumber less immersion breaking? Aren’t you still building wood objects out of iron?

- And to get back to an earlier point: there is very little evidence for Lack of a Resource being permanently crippling to anybody until the quantities become Industrial and an order of magnitude greater than they were for most of the Game Time (like, the last 300 out of the 6000 or so years in the normal Civ time-frame).
To take Timber (meaning the heavy Ship Timbers in discussion), there was none available in ancient and classical Egypt, yet classical (Ptolemaic) Egypt built a large fleet of Polyreme warships (4, 5, 6, 10 banks of oars each) and the largest polyreme ever built - the Prestige-Only 40-banked catmaran that could carry 4000 troops at once!
- Because they had the Gold to pay well for people to bring them the Timbers - from Lebanon, Macedon, Greece, and even possibly from the Caucasus down the Black Sea - virtually everywhere with trees within commercial reach.

In addition, there are almost always Substitutes: the first coastal boats known (Egypt and Mesopotamia) were not made of Timber at all: they were of reed bundles, in the case of the ships venturing out from lower Mesopotamia strengthened and waterproofed with Bitumin from the oily pools already discovered in the region. These galleys were sufficient to carry the first troops along the coast, and shipping (including massive stone blocks) up and down the rivers.

Nor is this limited to the Ancient World: Major Combatants like Britain, USA, and the USSR in World War Two all built aircraft all or partly out of wood and/or canvas instead of the specialized aluminum alloys normally used - Just In Case they ran out of the Aluminum. Nor were these 'second-rate' aircraft: they included the British Mosquito bomber/night fighter and Pathfinder, the American F4U Corsair fighter, and the Soviet La-5FN air superiority fighter, all considered among the best of their types.

Lack of resources is limiting mainly in that it makes it more Expensive to build something, or requires more work to find a substitute - perhaps even substituting a new manufactured or traded Resource, substituting Gold or Trade for Mining or Refining to get what you want or need - but it doesn't stop you from doing something that your Civ needs to do.

 

[BuchiTaton]

I think the best way is to keep almost all units/buildings available to built but give huge cost reduction from the proper resource if it is present in the same city. For example:
CITY 1 > Galley = 200 gold
CITY 2 > Galley = 50 gold (-75% cost from Lumber camp)

Easy, simple, abstract but still get a huge bonus from the proper resource improvement in the right place.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think the best way is to keep almost all units/buildings available to built but give huge cost reduction from the proper resource if it is present in the same city. For example:
CITY 1 > Galley = 200 gold
CITY 2 > Galley = 50 gold (-75% cost from Lumber camp)

Easy, simple, abstract but still get a huge bonus from the proper resource improvement in the right place.

The only thing I would change would be "present in the same city" to "available to the same city":

The city that has a Settlement sending a Resource to the city would (rightly) have enhanced production using that resource. Originally a Settlement would be 'tied' to a single city, later, with railroad/internal combustion technologies making speedy transport available everywhere the roads and railroads go, a Settlement might 'feed' the resource to any city in the transport web.

 

[criZp]

Gameplay is in every imaginable way the most fundamental element of any game.

Why would you play anything if it isn't giving you a good experience? Experience is what really matters. Fun mechanics contribute to that.

Immersion isn’t even close to mastering as much. (Though it does matter)

Who are you to decide what matters for my experience?

And sure, okay, only heavy ship require timber. How does requiring lumber for heavy ship make building light ship without lumber less immersion breaking? Aren’t you still building wood objects out of iron?

It's not about it being immersion breaking or not, it's about the alternative. All wooden ships need timber. But as you said, to give for example desert civs like arabia the chance to also participate on the ocean, we can make some exceptions for the sake of balance (assuming that naval stuff actually matters in the next civ game).

 

[mitsho]

Another point, if the idea is that "lumber mills should increase production of iron-products because your people are actually trading the timber for iron without you knowing it"... Then how come you can't convert stuff like gold/food/etc. directly into production? Surely you could acquire that iron by trading for not only timber, but anything you have.

QFT, and that‘s exactly why I argued for only one ressource that piles up and that you can spend how you want. I would combine that with a resource system including timber, but which is a simple on/off switch for each tile based on the trade network you built and the speed and capacity technology makes available to you. Would that be realistic? No, in a turn, it‘s possible to bring pretty much everything anywhere. But it‘s simple to understand and could be fun to build up and to disrupt in wartime. In other words, I can imagine that to be good gameplay. But it‘s for sure not needed, if you can create a different fun gameplay that‘s closer to reality than the current really bad system, go for it.

 

[Evie]

The current "really bad" system has been a hallmark of one of the most successful strategy franchise on the planet for thirty years. And is, in fact, one of the most copied features of Civ in other 4X games that also use the handful of broad resources (production, food, etc).

Given that, I doubt your "really bad" is reflective of anything more than personal subjective preference that have very little to do with the actual ability of the game to appeal to users. If anything, I would argue that the relative simplicity of the resource and production system, including the fact that production speed is one directly visible statistics, has been one of the strengths of the format.

Completely overhauling those systems is not impossible - other civ systems have been overhauled - but the idea that it's needed or necessary or that the current system is "really bad" is badly unsupported and seems to reflect the opinions of a small clique of realism-obsessed players.

 

[criZp]

Resorting to appeal to popularity? We are supposed to be enthusiasts on here

 

[Evie]

When someone present as an objective truth a clearly subjective statement, the fact that their opinions are at high variance with that of the majority is relevant.

And I've known thousands of game enthusiasts across a wide range of games. Being a game enthusiast doesn't correlate much with understanding of game design.

 

[criZp]

More interested fans sometimes has ideas on how the series could evolve. Just because civ sells well doesn't mean the formula is perfect or that the majority of civ players believe the games are without room for improvement.

 

[Evie]

Nobody said it was without room for improvement.

I said calling a system that has been a cornerstone of not only the game but the genre since civ first used it thirty years ago "really bad" was nonsensical hyperbole. It may have room for improvement, but a "really bad" system would not have this longevity and this level of wholesale adoptiom in other games.

And the vast majority of interested fans' ideas are feature bloat based on satisfying their own personal interest in one obscure aspect, micromanagement be damned. Many of mine included, I just don't tend to post them.

 

[criZp]

I'm one of the biggest anti-micromanagers myself and I think micromanagement is usually an interface issue, not a mechanics issue.